Until now, piezoelectric actuators (driving mechanisms) employing a piezoelectric element have been known. As such a type of piezoelectric actuator, for example, Patent Document 1 below discloses that a driven body is driven by driving plural piezoelectric elements to elliptically move a tip member coming in contact with the driven body. When an XYZ orthogonal coordinate system is set up, the piezoelectric actuator disclosed in Patent Document 1 below drives the driven body in the X axis direction due to the elliptical movement of the tip member parallel to the XZ plane.